How the house fell apart and these songs came to be

At some point in the twenty-tens I buy a small workers house in the station area of Ghent. There, in the short dead end street that comes out on a supermarket rear car park, I begin to record my own songs after hours.

Its red cemented facade turns pink by itself, shortly after we move in. Turns out, it’s a canary in a coal mine. The place needs some serious attention.

At the same time -as an irrational counterweight to the unexpected load of work- I decide to teach myself how to record my music on a laptop. I’m in between bands and I try to embrace the creative isolation that comes with that. Every day, for a considerable period, watching YouTube tutorials is what I do. It’s a lot of work and I get lost in it every day. It’s fun.

For as long as I can remember, making songs is what I love best. The whole process of playing some random chords, not thinking too much and discovering what words my mind comes up with is always a thrill.

Looking back, it feels like I have always known this ‘dreamlike state’…

The summer of ’97. Having just bought a Tascam 424, I record my own songs for two months straight in the boiling attic room of my family house. I only come down to eat. Along the way, I figure out how to create a musical world of my own using overdubs. I’m a one man band. I plug the guitar straight into the four-track, play the drums on a toy jazzkit and scream my teenage heart out. The beautiful weird stuff.

Years later, in the pink house in that dead end street, I decide to link up with that. Start from scratch. Write new songs, arrange and record them myself again. Every evening I’m the silhouet in the lit window on the first floor. Sitting at the desk, playing guitar. Non-stop. Maniacal. Reworking over and over again, while mastodont freezer-trucks drive by beneath me.

Some songs get worse and some are eaten by the computer. A couple get better.

At that time I don’t necessarily want to give the music a singer-songwriter feel. Even though it’s only me. I’d rather make it sound like a full band. Strengthened by the early Elliot Smith records I love so much, I try to work around my technical restrictions, embrace the sonic imperfections and slowly find out what direction the music is taking me.

The solitude of the project comes to an end when I pass some of the finished songs to my long time musical companion Renaat. Having heard the music he sees potential in it and we talk about putting together a live band. He’ll play the drums.

Renaat brings Willem, Wouter and Filip along and some time later we start rehearsing.

The name

One day, I’m going through a monograph of the painter Frank Auerbach. I come across this page with the chapter title ‘Colour Plates’ and it gives me pause…

Not knowing what I will get to see next, it occurs to me that the Colour Plates could basically depict anything, but it would always be colorful. An idea I love!

In that brief moment of anticipation, just before turning the page, I think to myself: “Colour Plates…now these are two words that go well together and can trigger anyone’s imagination!